srainhoutx wrote:Goodness. I have meetings all morning and come back and see folks were expecting something new today. It's been stated repeatedly that we'll likely not know the finer details until Sunday/Monday. We have 2 Winter RECON missions ahead and a Pacific storm brewing way off the Pacific NW Coast. Cold air is building and heading S as we can see by observations, real time. If we get rain and then cold, so be it. I suspect that we are witnessing a common modeling issue in the shorter medium range. Will it produce some wintry weather? That remains to be seen and certainly was no guarantee to begin with. The cold is coming. How cold? We will get a better feel for that over the weekend as well. Also look at the interest in this system (event). Where ever this storm goes or impacts, it looks to be a major winter event. I’ll remain cautious until we know exactly what this thing is going to do.
Wise words srain. I think it is not good to dismiss something based on disappointment caused by one of several model flip flops. They're models....not human meteorologists. They are there to provide guidance and assist meteorologists in determining a forecast and sometimes don't do a very good job. This is far from certain or over.
Seems like it's deja vu all over again. Last time the models were consistent up until 5 days out, then " flipped" to warm.. Some said it was a gonna flop back, but it became a reality. I don't feel the models will flip back to cold again. It's game over.
BiggieSmalls wrote:From now on, whatever we think the % chances are of something happening, cut it in half; THAT is pretty much a universal rule to follow in the winter I think.
While Dallas may still see something here, it isn't anything special to get 25 or 26 and in the 30s during the day. We had that 2 weeks ago.
We've had that as well, although not getting out of the 30s is pretty infrequent. We've seen 20s many, many times this winter, and low or mid-20s quite a bit as well. I think (but hope I'm wrong) that this is going to be much ado about nothing, but I guess that's pretty common when model watching in the winter.
Edit: Sorry... didn't mean to be Doubting Debby, but it's hard to ignore the latest trend. Let it snow!
Last edited by southerngale on Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Another point I'll make and then off to another meeting. We have an active weekend ahead, weather-wise. A lot of folks have plans to run or watch the Marathon and we still don't know how that event is going to play out, totally. That Baja low is still spinning offshore and it was suppose to be moving inland in model world. I guess this should be in the January thread, but just a friendly reminder with all we think we know, we are often humbled by what the sensible weather actually turns out to be in the truth of the matter. Welcome to wild, wonderful, wacky world of weather.
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vci_guy2003 wrote:Seems like it's deja vu all over again. Last time the models were consistent up until 5 days out, then " flipped" to warm.. Some said it was a gonna flop back, but it became a reality. I don't feel the models will flip back to cold again. It's game over.
Folks. Folks. Folks....listen to Candy Cane, Jeff, Txagwxman and Wxman 57. The models are in flux right now. Candy Cane mentioned "lost radio transmission" right now. That means that, historically, the models lose (especially GFS) cold air. Well, it is doing that now. We will not know until Sunday or maybe Monday for verifiable items to tie this down. Wxman57 stated this many times over the past week and a half. He stated it would take until Sunday to see what is going on.
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I was just going through some old maps/forecasts I'd saved from previous events. One that I recall which looks VERY similar is the November 25th, 1993 ice storm across Texas. It was the Thanksgiving that the Cowboys were playing and Leon Lett made that bad play.
I'm looking at the projected upper-air flow and surface low/front projections from the models back then and they're nearly identical to the current projections of upper-air and surface pattern for next week.
In 1993, there was a large upper low that pinched off over Utah/Nevada and the southwest U.S. as Arctic air flowed down the Plains lee of the Rockies. The models back then developed a low center in northeast New Mexico and tracked it across the TX Panhandle and Oklahoma. The low was forecast to slow down the front until it moved off to the east, driving the front through southeast Texas by Friday, the 26th. Sound familiar?
What happened? The Arctic front just steamed on south, reaching the Gulf of Mexico before sunrise on the 25th, a day before the models had forecast it to arrive from 3-4 days out. Cold Arctic air invaded Texas a day ahead of "schedule". The thin layer of sub-freezing air resulted in widespread freezing rain across the state. I remember the Dallas are NWS office said "we just can't see the moisture" for any precip a day or two before the front moved through.
The current setup is quite similar to November of 1993, so we have to watch for the cold Arctic air to move south much faster than forecast. And we may not see a low development in the Southern Plains as the models currently forecast.
Thank you again for the wisdom. Hopefully the newbies will read it and digest it before Sunday. I am just hoping it is not storming too bad for the Houston Marathon. Brett Gotcher is gunning for a sub 2:10 and I think he can do it.
Thank you again for the wisdom. Hopefully the newbies will read it and digest it before Sunday. I am just hoping it is not storming too bad for the Houston Marathon. Brett Gotcher is gunning for a sub 2:10 and I think he can do it.
Yep, we call that ice storm the "Leon Lett Bowl Storm". It could happen next week. I remember the NWS going with highs in the 70s on Thanksgiving just 3 days out but the high was in the mid 30s.
